Published: Sunday, August 4, 2013 at 10:44 PM.

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At 2:36 a.m. on July 14, 2008, Kinston police found Ray Anthony Suggs dead with a gunshot to the back of his head, near the back porch of his Williams Street home.

Five years later, efforts to bring his killer to justice have stalled out.

Cmdr. Rick Harrell with the Kinston Department of Public Safety said he hoped that if people got another look at an artist’s sketch of a possible suspect, “maybe that would drum up somebody’s information where they would maybe give us a call and help us out, from the tip line. I did look through the case file, and without commenting on what the facts were, there was some information that had come in, and we did follow up on that, but we ran into a dead end with it.”

In the early hours of July 14, Suggs and a female friend were talking on his front porch when they decided to continue their conversation walking around to the back of the residence. At that time, two black men with handguns approached the couple and told them to lay on the ground.

One man wore a black shirt and pants, while the other wore a white shirt and dark pants. They demanded money, and one searched through Suggs’ pockets and removed a small amount of cash.

After asking for more money, it’s believed the man in the white shirt shot Suggs at close range.

The woman told police the men fled down George Street after the shooting, and while she was able to get a look at the shooter’s accomplice, she wasn’t able to get a good enough view of the killer himself.

At 2:36 a.m. on July 14, 2008, Kinston police found Ray Anthony Suggs dead with a gunshot to the back of his head, near the back porch of his Williams Street home.

Five years later, efforts to bring his killer to justice have stalled out.

Cmdr. Rick Harrell with the Kinston Department of Public Safety said he hoped that if people got another look at an artist’s sketch of a possible suspect, “maybe that would drum up somebody’s information where they would maybe give us a call and help us out, from the tip line. I did look through the case file, and without commenting on what the facts were, there was some information that had come in, and we did follow up on that, but we ran into a dead end with it.”

In the early hours of July 14, Suggs and a female friend were talking on his front porch when they decided to continue their conversation walking around to the back of the residence. At that time, two black men with handguns approached the couple and told them to lay on the ground.

One man wore a black shirt and pants, while the other wore a white shirt and dark pants. They demanded money, and one searched through Suggs’ pockets and removed a small amount of cash.

After asking for more money, it’s believed the man in the white shirt shot Suggs at close range.

The woman told police the men fled down George Street after the shooting, and while she was able to get a look at the shooter’s accomplice, she wasn’t able to get a good enough view of the killer himself.

The State Bureau of Investigation worked with KDPS on the initial investigation, and Suggs’ murder remains as one of the SBI’s notable unsolved cases. The Suggs case has company in Kinston, as well.

“I’ve been here with the department 26 years, and we had a couple cases that I worked on as a crime scene investigator myself, that still have not been solved,” Harrell said. “We worked a lot of leads, we thought we had suspects developed, but those leads did not pan out where we could effect arrest.”

He added, “But, we do still have open cases that periodically, from time to time, we try to look at those and develop new avenues to go down.”

Suggs’ mother Ethel Sutton, interviewed in 2010, believed the man who took her son’s life would be found.

“I know they are going to find who did it, because everyone has a conscience and sooner or later they are going to have to tell,” Sutton said. “The Bible says there is not anything covered up that will not be uncovered and I know that to be true.”